Hibs say Rod Petrie plea brought season ticket sales boost

Rod Petrie

Hibs have claimed “hundreds” of supporters have answered chairman Rod Petrie’s plea to back manager Pat Fenlon’s major rebuild of his Easter Road squad by buying season tickets.

Petrie made his appeal in the wake of the meltdown at Ibrox which saw Rangers demoted to the Third Division, a situation which, he revealed, had left an element of Hibs’ budget under threat.

Hibs were one of the first clubs to disclose they would oppose Rangers remaining in the SPL although well aware such a stance – which reflected the wishes of their fans – would bring financial consequences to all clubs. However, Petrie insisted the Edinburgh outfit were “in many ways” in a worse position than others because of the significant rebuilding job facing Fenlon.

Although reaching the Scottish Cup final had helped Hibs seal a significant number of season tickets – sales at that point said to be around 7000 – Petrie estimated 2000 supporters from last season had failed to renew, while he believed the disappointments of the past two years had resulted in some 3000 “lapsed” season ticket holders. As part of the club’s drive to persuade those who hadn’t committed, a group of volunteer fans embarked on a three-day effort to contact as many of the non-renewing season ticket holders as possible under the “Let’s Work Together” banner, the initiative also helping gather feedback from supporters.

Although no specific numbers were disclosed, in thanking those supporters who had bought a season ticket, Hibs

included the “hundreds who have renewed” since Petrie’s appeal.

Petrie said: “We are grateful to all supporters who, in these difficult times, have committed to help the manager in this vital pre- and early-season period as he seeks to build a new and improved squad for the season ahead.

“We know not every fan can make the commitment, and every fan who attends Easter Road or buys from the club store deserves our thanks, but season tickets play a unique role, providing an early certainty of income that allows us to shape the squad.

“We can only spend what we know we can afford and season ticket sales are a big part of that.”

Praising those supporters who had given up their own time to promote the “Let’s Work Together” move, Petrie added: “We will not be able to call all of the supporters, but the response to the initiative has been positive.”

Meanwhile, midfielder Sam Stanton has been named in the Scotland Under-19 squad which will face Germany in a friendly match at Falkirk on August 14.

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

Edinburgh Evening News provides news, events and sport features from the Edinburgh area. For the best up to date information relating to Edinburgh and the surrounding areas visit us at Edinburgh Evening News regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website Edinburgh Evening News requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.